This invention relates to metering of data usage in a system or device connected to a data service provider.
“Data providers,” such as cellular network providers and Internet Service Providers, charge users to access and to post data from remote data resources such as web servers and mail servers. Data providers may charge based upon connection time or as a fixed recurring fee. In these instances, the data providers have traditionally allowed unlimited bandwidth (i.e. unlimited data size transfer). However, with the increase in connection speed affordability and in the size of files transferred, users have increased data consumption dramatically leading at times to congestion and utilization stress on data providers.
In addition, different protocols have been developed for allowing users to share files or other data between electronic devices. For example, the advent of peer-to-peer protocols and applications allowing peer-to-peer transfers of files (such as Limewire and Bearshare) have permitted a large network of users to transfer increasingly larger and larger amounts of data with few limits.
Recently, media files which are typically of very large relative size are also being increasingly transferred to portable electronic devices and computer systems. For example, with the advent of electronic purchasing of media, such as music and video, many users have stopped purchasing physical CDs and DVDs and have instead downloaded desired media to their devices. As another example, content providers now allow content to be rented electronically by enabling time-restricted downloading of media—downloaded media expires and can no longer be played back when a delay lapses (e.g., 30 days from date of rental, or 24 hours from beginning playback of the media). The portable electronic media device (e.g. Apple's iPod®) revolution has increased significantly the overall consumption of data provider resources.
Because of the wide disparity in types of data transfer some devices or users may use disproportionately more data provider resources (e.g., bandwidth) than others. In fact, some data providers have found that a mere 5% of users (e.g., power users) may be responsible for 50% of consumed resources.
The data providers may increasingly alter the mechanism for charging users from a fixed or connection time based fees to usage-based fees. In such instances, data providers would charge users for the amount of data transferred in a given time window similar to mechanisms employed by electric or natural gas utility companies. There may thus be a need to monitor data usage and provide users, data providers, or both with the means to effectively manage such pricing mechanisms.